This invention is related to a heat pump-driven external combustion engine, and more particularly to a thermo external combustion engine driven under the heat gathered with a heat pump effectively.
The heat source of a legacy thermo external combustion engine comes from the combustion of petroleum, heavy oil, or alcohol, etc. In recent years, however, those combustible materials have been substituted with woods, scraps, or heat transfer media due to emission of carbon dioxide.
However, there are many heat sources on the earth, such as circulating air, sunshine, terrestrial heat, sea water, exhaust heat, etc., and those heat sources radiate heat continuously. Though some of them have been utilized with heat exchange technologies, they can""t deliver power to us effectively.
Thermo external combustion engines utilize the heat generated from fuel combustion or accumulated with heat transfer medium as the driving energy for their high temperature sides. According to the Sterling Engine theory, usually it is more effective to elevate the temperature at the high temperature side when one tries to improve the efficiency of the engine through increasing the temperature difference between the high temperature side and the low temperature side. In addition, another problem shall be considered: sole heat transfer medium may not deliver enough energy, but fuel will result in emission of carbon dioxide.
In consideration of above problems, this invention utilizes a heat pump that transfers the heat energy from an external heat source to its heat ventilation part/absorption part and a thermo external combustion engine that uses the heat energy provided from said heat ventilation part/absorption part of the heat pump; furthermore, the heat pump can be a metal oxide one, and the external combustion engine can be a Sterling Engine.
This invention utilizes a heat pump to gather energy from a natural heat source and then provides the heat energy gathered to the external combustion engine, which utilizes the temperature difference between its high temperature end and low temperature end as the driving force.
In recent years, with the development of technologies, the power generated often exceeds the power consumed in some devices. For example, because that the efficiency of above heat pump is improved up to 4 times, and the efficiency of above external combustion engine is improved up to 35%, the efficiency of dynamic transfer from the external combustion engine to the compressor of the heat pump is increased from 80% to 1.12. Thus the power generated exceeds the power consumed, and the extra power can be transformed into the power consumed to maintain a semi-perpetual motion machine state. In addition, with the reuse of the energy generated from the heat ventilation part/absorption part of the heat pump, the efficiency of the heat pump can be improved up to 4 times or higher. In that way, more extra power can be generated.